Does a 'Certified Domain' help SEO?
-
I see that GoDaddy offer a 'Certified Domain' option. Does this help SEO at all?
-
Yes, particularly McAfee and Verisign.
This is my belief and not necessarily commonly accepted (yet) amongst the SEO community. I base this belief on a few things:
-
Panda. The questions asked of Panda reviewers were of the type "Would you trust this site with your credit card information". There are studies which clearly demonstrate improved CTR based on the addition of symbols, which tells me these symbols have a positive influence on these decisions. Additionally, the inclusion of these badges are an item which Google can easily track. It is also easy for Google to separate out authentic badges from the many sites who fake it (i.e. show the trust badge image but do not offer the functionality).
-
Security. I sincerely believe sites with McAfee and VeriSign are more secure. I have a client who actually accepted direct credit card payments without SSL on his site. Doing such is a major violation of credit card acceptance, but somehow he managed to do it (prior to hiring me) and he got nailed. Someone hit his site with malware which stole credit card information. He fixed the problem but of course the malware issue impacts rankings.
If I can ever make the time I intend to write an article on this topic as I have done quite a bit of research. In my opinion VeriSign and McAfee's value is significantly higher then other SSL certificates due to their recognition amongst users. Trustwave, GoDaddy and other providers may offer a similar service, but it is very clear to me those badges do not offer the same recognition as do Verisign and McAfee. I just worked with a client who, on my recommendation, turned down a free eCommodo SSL and purchased a Verisign badge for $266. The bottom line is if that Verisign badge yields one extra customer per year, it pays for itself. This particular client sells a $60 product which is purchased monthly and has a high profit margin.
Also McAfee and Verisign (Norton) both have an extension with millions of users each. Users of their AV software will have sites with their trust badges highlighted with their "Seal in Search" feature. Clearly this function is designed to influence CTR and each company provides numbers to show support that conclusion. As far as ranking, I can't say whether Google uses this information as a ranking factor but I know they could and perhaps even should. If I was Google, I would address users with those browser extensions installed by boosting the rankings for sites with the specific seals.
In April of next year the Verisign Seal will change it's name to Norton. If Norton does not do any advertising, this may cause a significant drop in that seal's recognition and value. It's a big unknown at this point.
-
-
Ryan, do you think that a VeriSign, McAfee, Authorize or other "more accepted" "certification seals" might have any influence on rankings?
-
Thanks for the info - I won't bother with it then
I actually use https://www.freeparking.com but I need to create a CNAME record at the sub-sub-domain level (for Windows Azure verification) so I'm looking at other providers who do allow this. I have also read other people comment on GoDaddy's pushy sales tactics. I'll check out NameCheap.
-
GoDaddy's Certified Domain option is a $5 trust badge. A trust badge is valued based on two primary factors: recognition and standards. There are no standards for this badge, anyone can get it. While many people have heard of GoDaddy, I would suggest 99% of people have no awareness of what a "certified domain" is with respect to what GoDaddy offers and the badge has no recognition value.
In short, it's crap. http://www.godaddy.com/domains/certified-domains.aspx
You pay $5 and they verify your WhoIs information. That's it.
Most quality sites which involve ecommerce offer SSL certificates such as VeriSign or McAfee. These certificates are far more recognizable and offer much higher levels of tangible "certification". I wouldn't accept GoDaddy's certification symbol for free. That's just my opinion and others may share a different view.
I have used GoDaddy before but have since switched to NameCheap. GoDaddy's customer service is ok, but they are highly sales oriented with offers (i.e. sending spam e-mails and making their site difficult to use without being overwhelmed by offers) to customers asking them to buy a wide array of completely unnecessary products and services such as this domain certification.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should you 'noindex' Checkout Pages?
Today I was reviewing my Moz analytics and suddenly noticed 1,000 issues with pages without a meta description. I reviewed the list and learned it is 1,000 checkout pages. That's because my website has thousands of agency pages from which you can buy a product, and it reflects that difference on each version of the checkout. So, I was thinking about no-indexing (but continuing to 'follow') these checkout pages, but wondering if it has any knock-on effects I may be unaware of? Any assistance is much appreciated. Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Luke_Proctor0 -
SEO'ing a sports advice website
Hi Team Moz, Despite being in tech/product development for 10+ years, I'm relatively new to SEO (and completely new to this forum) so was hoping for community advice before I dive in to see how Google likes (or perhaps doesn't) my soon to be built content. I'm building a site (BetSharper, an early-stage work in progress) that will deliver practical, data orientated predictive advice prior to sporting events commencing. The initial user personas I am targeting would need advice on specific games so, as an example, I would build a specific page for the upcoming Stanley Cup Game 1 between the Capitals and the Tampa Bay Lighting. I'm in the midst of keyword research and believe I have found some easier to achieve initial keywords (I'm realistic, building my DA will take time!) that include the team names but don't reference dates or state of the tournament. The question is, hypothetically if I ranked for this page for this sporting event this year, would it make sense to refresh the same page with 2019 matchup content when they meet again next year, or create a new page? I am assuming I would be targeting the same intended keywords but wondering if I get google credit for 2018 engagement post 2019 refresh. Or should I start fresh with a new page and specifically target keywords afresh each time? I read some background info on canonical tabs but wasn't sure if it was relevant in my case. I hope I've managed to articulate myself on what feels like an edge case within the wonderful world of SEO. Any advice the community delivers would be much appreciated...... Kind Regards James.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JB19770 -
I'm a newb, built a website with Wix want to redirect it to a domain I own, but am reading that Wix is bad for this
Hi, I am building this site for my boss http://charlesfridmanpr.wix.com/real-estate and am still working on it. I'm getting close to the stage where I want to redirect it to the URL we want to use, but in reading these forums, it says that because all of subpages (?) have a # in them, they will not be read or indexed by google. I am very new to this, and while it may not look like it, the website has taken me quite a while to design. Is there a way to fix this? We want to appear high up for a non competitive keyword. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Charlesfridmanpr0 -
18,000 'Title Element is too Long' Errors
How detrimental is this in the overall SEO scheme of things? Having checked 3 of our main competitors, they too seem to have similar issues... I am trying to look at a solution but it is proving very difficult! Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Brand sections performing badly in SERP's but all SEO tools think we are great
I have had this problem for some time now and I've asked many many experts. Search for Falke in Google.co.uk and this is what you get: http://www.sockshop.co.uk/by_brand/falke/ 3rd Our competitor
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jpbarber
http://www.mytights.com/gb/brand/falke.html 4th Our competitor http://www.uktights.com/section/73/falke 104th this is us ????? 9th for Falke tights with same section not our falke tights section? All sites seem to link to their brand sections in the same way with links in the header and breadcrumbs, Opensite exporler only shows 2 or 3 internal links for our compertitors, 1600+ from us?
Many of our brand sections rank badly Pretty Polly and Charnos brands rank page 2 or 3 with a brand subsection with no links to them, main section dosn't rank? Great example is Kunert, a German brand no UK competition our section has been live for 8 years, the best we can do is 71st Google UK, 1st on Bing (as we should be). I'm working on adding some quality links, but our comtetitors have a few low quality or no external links, only slightly better domain authority but rank 100+ positions better than us on some brands. This to me would suggest there is something onpage / internal linking I'm doing wrong, but all tools say "well done, grade A" take a holiday. Keyword denisty is similar to our competiors and I've tried reducing the number of products on the page. All pages really ranked well pre Penguin, and Bing still likes them. This is driving me nuts and costing us money Cheers Jonathan
www.uktights.com1 -
Move webshop domain to the brand domain?
Hello, A client of mine has a brand with a website for over 10 years now.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Seeders
About 4 years ago the have opened a webshop on an other domain (like www.brandnamewebshop.com). At this moment the brand domain has a seomoz authority of 45.
The webshop domain authority is 25. The question:
Would it not be better to transfer the webshop to the brand domain because of the domain authority? If so, how can this be done the best way? With a 301?
I also think: what a loss of energy of building the authority on the other domain.
Is it an idea to use both domains for a webshop and rewrite the content? Or is there an other way to still make use of the built up domain authority? Would it really help the other domain when I make a 301 redirect (and make use of the pointing links to the webshop domain?). I hope somebody have some experience with this...
Looking forward to the possibilities! Gerjan0 -
My homepage doesn't rank anymore. It's been replaced by irrelevant subpages which rank around 100-200 instead of top 5.
Hey guys, I think I got some kind of penalty for my homepage. I was in top5 for my keywords. Then a few days ago, my homepage stopped ranking for anything except searching for my domain name in Google. sitename.com/widget-reviews/ previously ranked #3 for "widget reviews"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wearetribe
but now....
sitename.com/widget-training-for-pet-cats/ is ranking #84 for widget reviews instead. Similarly across all my other keywords, irrelevant, wrong pages are ranking. Did I get some kind of penalty?0 -
Could Sub domains damage our SEO?
Hi there, We're currently looking into integrating a new internal search function to our site which will involve housing the search results on a sub domain of our site. We have no intention of these search result pages becoming landing pages for organic traffic but would the inclusion of a sub domain affect the optimization of the main domain? i.e. could it effect our authority? Nige
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NigelJ0